October 2014 Update

Happy October everyone! The time when fall is beginning and the leaves are turning or it may be even snowing in some parts of Canada. Or if you’re in Uganda, it’s mild and sunny like it always is. It’s great to live in a place where it’s nice all the time but we definitely miss the change in seasons. This coming month also has some big events for our family. October 13 is Canadian Thanksgiving and it’s our anniversary. I can’t believe we’ve been married 6 years already. I love you babe!

This past month saw a couple of big events as well. On the 12^th I (Jay) turned 31 and on the 22^nd Nathaniel turned 4. It’s weird to me that I have a 4 year old. Also, as I talked about in last month’s update, at work I got to go on a project trip with EMI to DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo). The trip was great and I have talked a bit more about it below. Last, we have started the construction of the building I am managing here in Kampala, the new EMI and MAF (Missions Aviation Fellowship) office. We were doing work on the site in August but now we have started with the building itself. 

Here are some pictures of the kids from this past month:

Bethany & Nathaniel proud of a coloring project they completed with Mommy.

 

Beth a bit dirty. The kids had a fun day with sidewalk chalk.

Nate loving his bike!

Nate holding his birthday cupcakes at school.

Some of older kids from the Moms group that Becky hosts.

Anyway as you may remember, I went on a trip to the DRC for 10 days in the beginning of September. The trip went well and was such a great experience. Over the past few days I have been wondering how I can convey how the trip was. What I’ve come up with is that I will share a few pictures and a story. I could give some statistics and information but you guys can look that up yourselves. I want to try to tell about the great people I met in the DRC.

Our team of 8, made up of architects, engineers and construction managers, made the trip to Beni, DRC to visit a university called The Christian Bilingual University of the Congo (UCBC). A few years ago, they had started the construction of a Community Centre which was a huge building (70,000 sf +/-) in East African standards, that from the start had some design challenges. The idea for this building was to have classrooms, a library, offices, a radio station, miscellaneous rooms and most importantly, a huge auditorium. They really wanted this building to be a symbol to the community, to Beni and to DRC of what Jesus is doing in DRC. A part of their idea also was that they would manage the construction of this building themselves while the architect (an American living in Wisconsin) came over a couple times a year to check-in.

As a sidebar please know that in this story I am generalizing for the sake of getting the story across.

Anyway, the plan was that UCBC would manage the construction themselves and involve the community while doing it. Get some skin in the game if you will. Well it worked. They had men and women from the community carrying buckets of concrete up eucalyptus pole scaffolding and many other tasks. The problem with this however, was that they ended up with a building that had some huge structural issues concerning the concrete.  While we were there we met a man named Honorey who is the Academic Administrator for the university. He is basically the #2 under the President and he runs the university. He is a great man who is probably around 40 years old, grew up in small town DRC, worked as a Bible translator for a while translating the Old Testament into his local language, speaks 7 languages (I think) and now has a huge heart to see DRC healed from all the wars and changed for Jesus. One of the first days we were there, he told us that the construction of this Community Centre had been such a success for the community even though it was such a failure in terms of construction. As a leadership team, they had wrestled with and come to terms with the fact that potentially some or all of the Community Centre would need to be demolished. It was a hard pill to swallow. It was hard for the leadership team to be looking at this building that is so loved, is so huge and has such great potential but at the same time that is so unsafe and messed up. The leadership realized that they needed to pause and have an assessment done on the building: to see what can be saved with some remediation and what needs to be demolished and built again. Maybe this is a picture of DRC: such a huge country with such great potential but years of war have really messed up the country. Well UCBC’s mission is to help DRC change: to be a place where the leaders of tomorrow are changed by education and Jesus so that they can help change DRC. I left UCBC with a real burden for what they do and really looking forward to see how Jesus uses them.

I have attached a few pictures from my trip to DRC.

The Community Centre Building

The EMI Project Team

One of our architects presenting options to a university leadership group. The other man is Honorey doing some translation.

Some prayer requests for us this month:

• Pray for Becky as she continues teaching. She is super busy (and at time stressed out) and at the same time loves teaching these kids. She wants to teach but wants to be a good mom as well. Pray for good management of the expectations of her job and energy to be the mom she wants to be.

• Pray for me at EMI. For our Construction Management team as we work together to accomplish why we are here. The men and the buildings.